The present invention relates to apparatus for reducing vibrations of an engine and the body of a vehicle due to irregular combustion of the engine, using vibrations of a generator mounted on the engine.
Recently, the requirements for comfortable driving of a vehicle have become more server. For example, various proposals for reducing vibrations of the vehicle body during idling of the engine have been made conventionally. One example is to control a torque required for driving a generator provided on the engine to suppress vibrations of the engine to thereby reduce the vibrations of the vehicle body, as disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication JP-B 63-45498 for the Japanese Patent Application filed by Mazda Motor Corporation on Jun. 10, 1982.
In the technique disclosed in this publication, periodic torque fluctuations or torque pulsations due to compression and combustion cycles in the engine are canceled by turning on and off the field coil current in the generator synchronously with those torque pulsations to thereby cancel the resulting generator drive torque and hence reduce the body vibrations.
This conventional technique, however, does not allow for non-periodic irregular combustion (irregular bad combustion) generated during idling, and cannot cope with a situation in which irregular combustion causes engine vibrations which are then transmitted to the vehicle body to thereby adversely affect the comfort of driving.
While the conventional technique can cope with periodic torque fluctuations, it does not allow for vibrations inherent in the engine and vehicle body due to torque vibrations generated at irregular periods.
The torque fluctuations generated at irregular periods include torque fluctuations due to incomplete combustion generated once in two seconds-one minute during idling and torque vibrations due to disturbance of fuel supply control occurring when the engine operation is rapidly changed to idling state from high speed running.